Pregnancy of Revenge (13 page)

The day out had cleared her head. She was expecting Jake
d'Amato's
baby, and already she loved them both. But she knew better than most there were no guarantees in life. She had lost all her family, and she had seen through her work generations of families destroyed, even whole towns. She was pregnant, and she now had the chance to build her own little family. Charlie knew with absolute certainty that she had the ability and the strength of will to give her child a good life. As for Jake, she loved him and probably always would, but whether they got together was no longer the main issue. Her baby was her first concern, now and always.

'Age catching up with you too?'
Dave quipped as he reached her, and placed a guiding hand around her waist. 'Come on, I'll help you up the hill.'

Charlie laughed. 'Shouldn't that be the other way around, old man?'

The Lakeview Hotel was a beautiful old building, in a magnificent setting and not at all what Jake had expected. It had to be over a hundred years old, and constructed in stone with an elegant terrace along the front. The interior was Victorian in style with stone-mullioned windows, and mahogany-
panelled
walls, the wood mellowed with the patina of years. He doubted if the place had changed much since it was built, and, glancing at the key rack while waiting for
the receptionist, he noted there were only twenty letting rooms.
Hardly a big enough hotel to make much of a profit.
Not surprising Charlotte was eager to contact him, he thought cynically.

He had begun to believe in the two weeks they had spent together she was not the greedy, selfish bitch he had first thought. But now he
realised
she was cleverer than most. She had been aiming for the jackpot, a meal ticket for life. Impatiently he drummed his fingers on the desk. Where the hell was the receptionist?

A tall thin man finally appeared. 'Can I help you, sir?'

'Yes, I want to see the owner. Charlotte Summerville,' Jake snapped. He wasn't used to waiting.

'Your name, sir?'

'Jake
d'Amato.
She knows who I am,' he said impatiently.

'I am the manager—perhaps I can help?'

Jake looked at him and caught a look of amusement in the pale eyes. 'No, you damn well can't. I want to see Charlotte.' He was furious and he was taking no insolence from any man. 'Tell her I'm here.'

'That might be difficult, sir, as she has gone sailing for the day. We are expecting her about six.' Jake glanced at his watch. He would have to cool his heels for over an hour. 'If you would care to wait, I'll have the waitress serve you tea.'

There was no point in arguing—it wasn't the manager he was mad at. Taking a seat in the lounge, he suffered the attentions of a stony-faced waitress. He drank tea, which he loathed, and got the distinct impression from the cold looks slanted his way by the members of staff who passed by that they actively disliked the guests. Or perhaps it was just him in particular. Well, he had had enough. Slapping the paper he had been trying to read down on the table, Jake rose to
his feet and strode towards the double doors leading to the garden and beyond.

Three teenagers were running towards him, laughing and shouting, and he quickly stepped up onto the terrace that fronted the hotel. Where the hell was Charlotte?
he
wondered, gazing out over the glorious gardens to the lake beyond, and then he saw her.

Clad in the briefest of white shorts and a cropped top, she looked incredibly beautiful. Her long blonde hair, glinting with platinum streaks in the evening sun, tumbled around her shoulders and her long legs moved with lithe grace as she ran towards him.

A brilliant smile of pure masculine satisfaction cut across Jake's strong face. She still adored him. He forgot he was furious. Five long weeks he had been without her—he must have been mad to wait so long. But not any more and a charge of testosterone fired up his body with incredible excitement. Then she stopped.

In the next second Jake
realised
he could swing from euphoria to a fury that threatened to explode as the truth hit him like a blow to the solar plexus. She was not running towards him, she had not even seen him, and she was not alone. From his vantage point, with his grip white-knuckled on the terrace balustrade, he watched Charlotte laugh happily up into the face of the older man who had stopped beside her, and, with an ease born of long practice, slipped an arm around her bare waist.

Jake jerked his proud head back, and drew in a sharp lungful of air. No man touched his woman, not ever. Outraged and furious beyond belief he vaulted over the balustrade and strode towards her.

Charlie, in blissful ignorance of the impending confrontation, was happily regaling Dave with details of her trip
around Kew Gardens when Dave interrupted her, his arm falling from her.

'Don't look now, but a very large, very dark and very angry man has just leapt off the terrace and is heading our way.'

Charlie's head spun to the front. Jake! It was Jake in the flesh, and a quivering excitement lanced through her, quickly followed by a shiver of something very like fear. She could feel the anger, the fury sizzling from him at twenty paces.

'
Charlotta
.
At last,' he drawled, his black molten gaze capturing hers as he closed the distance between them, hauled her into his arms, and crushed her against his broad chest. 'I came at your call,
cara.'
His deep accented voice resounded in her ear, and for a split second she remained frozen. Then she trembled helplessly, the familiar wild excitement rushing through her veins as he angled his head and took her slightly parted lips, probing straight between them with a savage, possessive passion that left her breathless and weak at the knees when he finally ended the kiss.

Heavy-lidded black eyes gleamed steadily down at her flushed face and slightly swollen mouth. 'You missed me...yes?' he prompted.

Charlie nodded her head. Jake was here, and he still wanted her.

'Good. Then perhaps you would care to introduce me to your companion.' He
recognised
the man from the photograph, but Jake had a point to make.

'My companion?'
Charlie was not thinking straight; in fact she was having trouble thinking at all. She lifted puzzled eyes to his face, and was taken aback to discover he was looking coolly over her head. Only then did she remember Dave. She turned brick-red and tried to ease out of Jake's hold, but he was having none of it. Instead he simply spun her around, one strong arm curved across her bare waist trapping her back against his chest.

His free hand he offered towards Dave, his blatantly possessive masculine stance saying clearer than words that she was his woman. 'Jake
d'Amato,
and you are?'

Cool and calm, Dave took the extended hand. 'Dave Watts, A very old friend of the family and a kind of honorary dad to Charlie since the death of her parents.'

'Really.
I trust not of the sugar variety.'

'Definitely not,' Dave said bluntly. 'But I can see why you would be worried. She is very sweet.'

Charlie was shocked at Jake's outrageous comment and she felt the sudden tension in his body. Twisting her head, she glanced up at him. His dark eyes were narrowed with piercing intensity on Dave, and, twisting back, she saw Dave was equally intense. They resembled nothing so much as two great predatory beasts meeting head to head before fighting to the death.

Then it struck her. Jake's passionate kiss had been arrogant macho posturing at the sight of Dave. Jake didn't love her, but his massive ego would not allow him to entertain the thought she might have another man. Simmering with resentment, she watched in silence as the two men eyeballed each other. Then suddenly Dave laughed out loud.

'You'll do.' He slapped Jake on the back as if they had been friends for years. 'But hurt
her
and you'll have me to reckon with. And now I better go and chase up the boys, before they cause any damage. See you later, Charlie.' And he walked away.

She'd been unwilling to cause a scene in front of Dave, but Charlie had no such qualms when he left. 'Let go of me, you big jerk,' she snapped and twisted violently in Jake's hold.

'Certainly.'
Jake spun her around to face him. 'But first,
tell me, where is Dave's wife? He seems overly protective of you as a happily married man,' he demanded, all hard male arrogance.

'Lisa died last year,' Charlie said flatly. 'And before you insinuate Dave is my lover, let me tell you not all men have the morals of a sewer rat.'

Implying I have?' Jake drawled. He was an astute judge of character, and he knew his own sex well. The arm Dave had had around Charlotte's waist had not been avuncular, and given half a chance Dave would take it.
But not any more.
Jake had made that plain. As for Charlotte... his intense dark eyes swept over her beautiful face. She looked the picture of innocence, but then she always had looked innocent. It was the first thing he had noticed about her at the art gallery before he had seen her cynical smile and dismissive shake of her head when viewing the painting and dismissed it as play-acting. But then she had also felt innocent he recalled, as the first time they had made love flashed in his mind. Her startled gasp, her incredible hot, tight body was not a good image to remember when he was already rigid with desire, and, dropping his arm from her waist, he stepped back. He adjusted his suit jacket and stuck his hands into the pocket of his tailored trousers, his fingers curling into fists.

The jury was still out on Charlotte. The fury that had engulfed him when
Marta
had passed on Charlotte's message this morning and fuelled his immediate flight to England was still simmering.

If the cap fits,' Charlie sneered, lifting stormy blue eyes to his, and was even more incensed. Jake was so suave, so in control. He was immaculately clad in a tailored slate-grey business suit, and he should have looked incongruous in the casual setting, but he didn't. He looked magnificent, swaying back on his heels waiting... and watching.

The silence lengthened, and the tension. Biting her lips, she reined in her temper. 'What are you doing here, Jake?'

She was no fool. His passionate embrace on arriving had been nothing more than his high-handed way of manipulating her feelings in front of Dave. But no matter how hurt and suspicious she was, she still wanted Jake.
She had ached and cried over him for five painful weeks, in a roller-coaster ride of emotions, ecstatic when he called and plagued with doubt when he didn't.
Ashamed of her weakness, she tilted her chin. 'Apart from insulting my friend, that is.'

Jake studied her with fixed attention, his dark eyes gleaming below thick black lashes. He wondered if she had any idea how desirable she looked, her lovely face flushed with anger and her chin tilted at a defiant angle. 'I don't wish to argue with you over your friend.'

'I bet you don't,' Charlie mocked, the picture in the magazine still fresh in her mind. Jake was a two-timing snake. 'Enjoy yourself in New York, did you? I hear you met up with your
old friend
Melissa,' she snarled and watched as his black brows drew together in a frown.

'You saw the magazine article,' he said, with a smug smile dawning that made her want to knock it off his face.

'Dinner good, was it? Or was the smile on your face for the
afters
you were anticipating?'

'Very good, and it was for a very good cause,' Jake said silkily. Charlotte was jealous and, much as he was tempted to play her along, there were more important matters at stake here. 'Melissa
is
an old friend, and, yes, before you
ask
, we were lovers, but it was over months before I met you. She left me for another wealthy man who, as it happens, was her date at the dinner—not I.'

'She left you!' Charlie exclaimed. Furious with the man, she still found it incredible that any woman would willingly dump Jake
d'Amato.

He shrugged. 'It was no big deal.
A mutual parting of the ways.'
Charlie was inclined to believe him, because she knew from personal experience Jake was a workaholic and she doubted any woman was a big deal to him, including herself.
'But enough about my past love life.
It is the present I am here to talk about, and preferably not in public view.'